Wednesday, March 31, 2010

A popular and surprisingly hilarious activity at last night MusicNow Festival show featuring Joanna Newsom. An impromptu Q&A was the recurring theme. One audience member: "Why does the harp go out of tune so much?" JN, with a winsome smile and far-off gaze: "... Why .. is the Sun warm?" (audience laughs heartily) and she adds: "if you're a harpist, they say you spend half the time tuning your harp and the other half playing an out-of-tune harp."

Shooting for Smiley Pete's Leading Ladies of the Bluegrass series. Explanation of why I'm being a total cheese: I use myself — and a self-timer — to frame a portrait, get the light levels close to right, and approximate expressions for my subject. When I'm close to ready with these things I'll call them in. everybody wins, and I get some funny self-portraits along the way.

Monday, March 22, 2010

Creepy things about the missing children wall at Wal-Mart: 1. Kids missing (of course) 2. Often they're listed as being last seen with one or the other parent. I'm not sure that I agree that this counts as "missing." 3. Some — like this one — are described as being "age-progressed." so the right-side image is digital speculation.

"We are the World" is one of those things that gets stuck in my head sometimes, being simultaneously terrible and wonderful. Gotta give it to Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie — the song itself is so infectious and just kind of burrows into your brain. It has some qualities of a "round," even though it's not really one.

Last night, I dreamt that I was at some sort of charity event in a group with Quincy Jones. A group of a dozen or so people — friends, I think — were crouched down in a circle and we were listening to WATW booming over the PA. I was delighted by it, and thought it would be funny to ape Springsteen's gutteral back-and-forths with Stevie Wonder, and in the dream, Quincy kind of shushed me, as he listened to it, rapt. He was benign, smiling and staring off, the way some people do when they listen to music, kind of holding out his hand in my direction in a sort of "…hold on, hold on…" gesture.

Later in the dream, I was scoffing incredulously to some friends, saying "Really?! How could he possibly be shushing me? He must have heard WATW at least 15,000 times at this point!" I couldn't believe that he was still listening to it as though still in the studio.

It was a funny little dream. I think the remake (below) lacks most of the charm of the original, but it's still hard to take your eyes off of it — and of course there are far worse things you could do than open your pocketbook for the cause.

Friday, March 19, 2010

I'm anticipating drive-in season. I have a nagging recollection that I may not have gone to either SkyVue or my treasured Bourbon Drive-In, in Paris, KY. That's inexcusable, really, and I'll try to make up for it this year with more fried food & covert hatchback cocktails